North Ossetia mourns for Beslan school siege victims

The memorial events will continue at the graveyard – the City of Angels

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VLADIKAVKAZ, September 3 (Itar-Tass) — A minute’s silence is held at the ruins of School No.1 in Beslan to remember those killed in the siege on September 3, 2004, when 334 people died, 186 of them children.

By tradition when the bell tolls twice, school children released into skies 334 balloons at 13:05 Moscow time, when the first blast rocked the school’s gymnasium, where Chechen rebels take hostage 1,128 people.

The memorial events will continue at the graveyard – the City of Angels, where the names of all those killed in the secondary school siege will be pronounced under the ticks of a metronome.

From the very first days of the Memorial Vigil that began on September 1 thousands of mourners with flowers and toys arrived in Beslan from every corner of North Ossetia. They lay flowers at graves of those killed, the Tree of Mourning memorial and the monument to soldiers of the Russian federal forces who were killed while storming the besieged school.

On Friday the memorial plates were unveiled in Beslan to remember servicemen of Alfa and Vympel special task forces and two rescuers of the Emergencies Ministry’s Tsentrospas detachment.

The three-day mourning will end with the Candle of Memory action, when memorial candles will be lit in houses and apartment buildings all over South Ossetia.